Zip (17 page)

“Once upon a yesterday, I lived far away, oh, so very far away…”

Lyssa unconsciously sucked the end of her braid into her mouth. Her mother used to sing her a song like that…She sang it to Lyssa every night before falling asleep at the hospital. That had been one of Lyssa’s favorite lines: once upon a yesterday…

She crept closer, leaning past the stage curtain

“Being with you feels like home,”
the mermaid sang. That sounded like a line from her mother’s song too.

It wasn’t until that moment, as Lyssa was standing behind the stage curtain, watching the giant mermaid sing, that something clicked. There was a reason she recognized that
song, a reason she
knew
that voice. She’d heard it echoing from her computer speakers, she’d heard it belted across a stadium filled with hundreds of people on her last birthday This voice could only belong to one person: Athena.

Lyssa squinted hard at the mermaid. Was it possible…?

Athena hadn’t been seen in public in nearly a year—ever since the night of the concert that Lyssa attended with her mom. Then her hair had been a deep, chestnut brown instead of blond, and she’d been wearing her signature cowboy hat and boots, but there was no doubt in Lyssa’s mind that the mermaid singing on stage was
her
. She might be wearing platform shoes. She had probably dyed her hair; maybe she was afraid of being recognized.

Lyssa fought the urge to run across the stage. She had a million questions to ask. She wanted to know why Athena had left and when she was coming back. She wanted to ask whether it was true that Athena too had lost someone

But most of all, she wanted to get closer to that voice. She wanted to suck this new song into her pores, to absorb it, the way her mom had always said music wasn’t heard but breathed and felt

Lyssa looked around, quickly finding the narrow ladder leading to the catwalk above stage. She knew from working with the Texas Talent Show that the catwalk was where the stagehands went to switch out the lights. It was also the
best seat in the house, directly above the performers. She tucked Zip behind a heavy velvet curtain for safekeeping, then started up the ladder

Hanging next to the ladder was a thick length of rope. Lyssa gave it a tug and the cardboard ocean scene behind the singing mermaids shifted ever so slightly. Lyssa looped the rope around her waist before she started to climb. It was a trick she’d learned from Penn, from her early days of circus camp. If she fell (
when
she fell, Penn would say), she didn’t want to get hurt. Tightening the rope, she scurried up the ladder.

The catwalk was narrower than Lyssa expected it to be—not even wide enough for her to stand on with both her feet together. She wrapped her fingers around the edges of the wood and rose shakily to her feet, holding her arms out straight on either side like she’d seen Penn do. Nerves clenched Lyssa’s stomach, making it feel like a wet T-shirt that someone was wringing out over the sink. She carefully edged forward and the wood creaked beneath her sneakers

Every inch Lyssa crept forward felt like a mile. She held her breath. The distance between her feet and the stage below terrified her, but she was too scared to tear her eyes away from her pink, sparkly tennis shoes. She’d only ever been up the Talent Show’s catwalk with her mom, and it
had never seemed quite so high or wobbly. By the time she got to the center of the catwalk, Athena had been joined by two backup mermaids and their voices wove together, growing louder and louder, a wall of sound that made the catwalk tremble beneath Lyssa’s feet. Lyssa swallowed, trying to keep her balance by looking straight ahead and thinking balanced thoughts. Clenching her eyes shut, she imagined a bear standing on a ball at the circus or a little kid learning to ride a bike

It didn’t work. This time, when Athena’s voice rose into the air, Lyssa tried to drop back down to her hands and knees. On her way down, she stepped on one of her shoelaces and her foot slipped out from under her. All of a sudden she was falling…

The ground raced toward Lyssa and she braced herself for a face-first dive into the stage, but the rope around her waist grew taut and she swung forward right at the last second—causing the mermaids to scatter,
screaming
, across the stage. One mermaid leapt into the audience, landing on a man’s lap.

As Lyssa swung back and forth, she scanned the stage for Athena—trying to spot her—but the famous singer was nowhere. It was as though, once again, she’d just disappeared

The ocean scenery rocketed toward the ceiling, breaking into pieces when it hit the catwalk. Lyssa swung forward—right
through a curtain of wooden beads the mermaids had been dancing in front of. Strings of beads tangled against Lyssa and then clattered to the ground, rolling across the stage

Lyssa swayed back and forth. Her ankle was twisted in the rope above her and she was upside down. The tips of her blond braids brushed against the stage. Uh-oh

“What in the world…?” A very short man covered in tattoos stomped onto the stage, his face red as a tomato. The name tag on his shirt read
Manager
. Behind him, audience members were yelling and running into one another, as though they were worried the whole theater was about to come down on their heads.

Lyssa looked around once more for Athena. Athena would understand; Lyssa knew she’d be able to explain if she could explain to
her
, but the statuesque mermaid was gone. Lyssa remembered, with a sinking feeling, that just yesterday she’d thought an old woman was Athena. Maybe the mermaid hadn’t been Athena after all. Maybe it’d been her imagination playing tricks on her. Again.

“Where are your parents?” the manager demanded, trying to untangle Lyssa’s ankle from the rope. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

“She’s with me,” came a shrill voice from the back of the theater. Still swaying back and forth on the rope, Lyssa
saw a tall, thin woman wearing what looked like a wig and a fake nose

Lyssa smiled, weakly, and waved

“Hi, Aunt Mabel,” she croaked

L
yssa huddled near the club’s entrance with Zip, feeling terrible, watching from a distance as Circe argued with the manager in a hushed voice. Circe’s face was flushed and she was so distracted that she didn’t even notice the bright red curl peeking out from under her wig. She wouldn’t meet Lyssa’s eyes. The manager said something and Circe groaned and kicked at the leg of a chair with one of her stilts.

“Fine!” she yelled. She tottered out of the club, sweeping past Lyssa without saying a word. A minute later she appeared again, swaying a little on her stilts as she carried a basket filled to the brim with peaches. She dropped the
basket onto the floor in front of the club manager. He looked down at the peaches and crossed his arms over his chest

“And?”

Circe gave him a pained look. Then she stepped off her stilts and kicked them over. The short, tattooed manager immediately picked them up and began strapping them to his feet

“There,” Circe said. “We’re even. Come on, Lyssa.”

Lyssa followed Circe out of the club without a word. Before she climbed back into the truck, she pulled the rhinestone-encrusted bra out of her pocket. She hoped that it might make up—at least a little—for Circe’s lost stilts

“I—I thought you might need this. For your Aunt Mabel costume…” Lyssa trailed off, feeling stupid

Circe just wrinkled up her nose. “What am I going to do with
that
?” she said, waving away the gift.

Embarrassed, Lyssa balled up the bra and shoved it into her pocket. She walked over to the passenger side of the truck and climbed inside

Next to her, Circe took a deep breath, shaking her head

“I can’t believe you did that! You know we’re trying to keep a low profile. Why couldn’t you have stayed in the truck like I told you to?”

Lyssa felt her skin burning. “I couldn’t stay there!” she burst out. “There were these guys, and they came after me, and…”

“Came after you?” Circe repeated. Lyssa swallowed and stared down at a thin patch in her muumuu that was sure to become a hole, picking at a loose thread with her fingers. She couldn’t tell Circe about the Missing Person posters—Circe didn’t know she’d run away

“I—I think they were after Zip,” she said, feeling helpless. She’d lost Circe all those peaches
and
her stilts. Lyssa was sure that nothing she could say would make her feel better. “I’m sorry,” she added. Circe just shook her head and shifted the truck into drive. A plume of gray smoke escaped from under its hood.

“What are we going to do?” Lyssa asked once they’d been on the road for a few minutes, listening to the truck sputter and spit. Circe shook her head

“Find a motel.”

“Here? Can’t we find another mechanic?”

“There’s only one mechanic for miles, and he said he’ll have the part we need tomorrow morning. We’re lucky he got the truck working at all.”

Lyssa sighed and looked out her window. She knew they couldn’t exactly ride around in a broken truck, but she didn’t want to spend the night in this strange, abandoned
town either. She turned back to Circe, wishing there was some way she could explain just how sorry she was. But Circe’s face was so red and pinched that Lyssa decided to talk to her later.

Instead, she pulled out her journal

Lyssa closed the journal and shoved it back into her backpack. Circe was still in a terrible mood. As they drove she kept muttering about money and scribbling numbers on spare napkins while they waited at traffic lights. When she stopped for gas, she found a pay phone and spent half an hour looking through the phone book for a motel that would allow her to bring her pigs into the room. While Circe argued on the pay phone, Lyssa watched the numbers on the truck’s dashboard clock tick away. 2:45. 3:02. 3:21…

Finally, they pulled up in front of a motel that looked like something out of a horror movie. A vacancy sign flickered at the edge of the parking lot and heavy floral curtains
covered all the motel room windows. In the buzzing fluorescent glow the flowers on the drapes looked like they were moving. Lyssa swallowed

“Can’t we just sleep outside again?” she asked

“I want to take a shower, if that’s all right with you,” Circe said in a clipped voice

A sign in front of the lobby read
Motel Charybdis
.

“What’s a cherry-by-dis?” Lyssa asked, stumbled over the strange word. Circe just shrugged

“It’s ker-
ibb
-dis,” Circe corrected her, throwing open her door. Lyssa swallowed.

“This place looks haunted.”

“Do you want to pay for a hotel?” Circe snapped. “Now come on.”

Circe pulled on her wig, and Lyssa followed her inside to pick up their room key. The motel’s lobby was just as dingy and creepy as the outside suggested. The only spot of color was a pot of purple lilies sitting on the front desk, but all the flowers were pointed to the window, their stems stretched out in odd angles like they were trying to escape.

A young woman with stringy blond hair stood behind the desk. Lyssa cringed when the woman smiled at them. Her teeth were very large and very white, and it looked like there were far too many of them shoved into her mouth

“Welcome to Motel Charybdis,” the woman said. She
had a slight southern accent that made all her words sound stretched out, like an old pair of panty hose. “My name is Kyla. Do y’all have a reservation?”

“Yes, under Mabel Hemmingway,” Circe said, lowering her voice to sound older. Kyla gave them both another toothy smile. Circe glanced out the window to check on her pigs, but Kyla kept her eyes on Lyssa. She ran her tongue over those long, white teeth.

“I’m going to wait outside,” Lyssa muttered. Kyla gave her the creeps. She stared at Lyssa in a way that made her wonder if Kyla recognized her from all those Missing Person posters

A few minutes later, Circe came out with the key and they headed over to their motel room. Practically no light filtered through the dusty windows. The carpet was mud brown, and the wallpaper was peeling from the walls. Circe pulled off her wig and tossed it onto the bed. Lyssa huddled near the door while Circe walked into the bathroom and flipped on the light

“Ugh,” Circe moaned, her voice echoing off the bathroom walls. “This won’t work at all.”

“Is it really that bad?” Lyssa asked, following Circe into the bathroom

The bathroom was very small. The toilet water was greenish, and there were strips of paint peeling away from
the walls. But it looked cleaner than the rest of the motel room

Then Lyssa turned around and saw the bathtub. Green mold carpeted the bottom of the tub tiles. Three tiny lizards moved around the tub. When Lyssa peeked over the side, their long tongues shot back into their mouths

“No wonder they’ll let me keep pigs in the room,” Circe muttered, eyeing the lizards. “Come on.”

Lyssa clicked her tongue, hoping the lizards would look up at her. She actually liked lizards—there were always some hanging out by the pond in her garden back at Texas. But there was no point in showering in a mold-carpeted tub.

As Lyssa turned to go, she caught her reflection in the mirror hanging over the sink. Her blond hair was stringy, and it stuck out of her braids in odd clumps, and there were tiny brown flecks speckled across her nose and chin. Lyssa rubbed at the spots on her nose. She sometimes got freckles in the summer when she was outside a lot, but when she leaned in closer, she saw that the flecks were actually tiny spots of dirt and tomato juice

Lyssa wrinkled her nose. She looked like a creature that lived in the sewers. She and Circe had cleaned off earlier using baby wipes Circe kept in her glove compartment, but Lyssa still had tomato juice inside her ears and in the crooks of her elbows. She needed a bath
Bad.